


Gun Street Boys

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Doctor John, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Episode: s01e03 The Great Game, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, The Adventure of the Empty House, armed & disarmed, army John, recoil & re-entry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:26:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't romanticise guns," John says severely, tasting dust, "never have."</p>
<p>The young soldier looks up at him.</p>
<p>Far away and much later Sherlock Holmes looks up at him in nearly the same way, just for a second, over the ocular of a microscope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gun Street Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by Tom Waits, [“Gun Street Girl”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz28AD7qYe8)

_"Bittersweet baby, where'd you get that gun?"--Kathleen Edwards_

 

"I don't romanticise guns," John says severely, tasting dust, "never have."  
  
The young soldier looks up at him.  
  
Far away and much later Sherlock Holmes looks up at him in nearly the same way, just for a second, over the ocular of a microscope.  
  
 *****  
  
"Guns," says the American in the pub.  
  
“Yeah,” says John, "useful at times, I suppose."  
  
“Second Amendment," the American says, lifting a badly-poured pint of plain.  
  
"I’ve heard of it," says John, eyeing the exits.  
  
"He saved my life once," Sherlock says. "No, more than once. And not just mine."  
  
That perks up the American, the barman too, and several nurses and a supervisor of clinical trials at the next table.  
  
"Give,” someone says, and Sherlock does, with plausible deniability and narrative flair that doesn't once make John want to climb under his chair.  
  
"You’re a hero," someone says. Someone else sets a drink down next to him.  
  
"Not really," John says.

I'm not, Sherlock thinks.

_But you are._

*****

He's holding Sherlock (the bruise-eyed boy he once was), holding him still with the tensile volatile ease with which he grips his weapon, closes wounds, closes eyes.  
  
Sherlock turns in his hands, turns the gun in his hand, hefts it, flips it quick and John takes his wristbones, takes the steel, feels the arteries there slipping under his hand, the rough and tender landscape of the grip.  
  
The muzzle flash is blinding.  
  
It doesn't happen.  
  
 *****  
  
Shoot the wall. Shoot the lights out. Shoot off your mouth.  
  
Just leave yourself out of it because I need you I need you.  
  
 *****  
  
When John was eleven he shot a friend's brother in the forearm with a BB gun. He got a severe talking-to and a grounding for days and a proper sense of shame and windage and better aim.  
  
He thought of that once, ludicrously, in the desert, after he'd just shot a man and stitched up another, after he'd tasted blood and vomited surreptitiously in the grievous, scrubby hollow of a tent-corner.  
  
You haven't lived until you've disarmed a twelve-year-old who’s about to kill you and a twelve-year-old thirty-five-year old who might be about to accidentally kill himself and who will kill himself and leave a bloody great hole in your shoulder, no in your, well, fuck,in your heart.  
  
Where else.  
  
 *****  
  
When he was ten Sherlock ran away to London and ran with the street boys, learned gravity knives, a sticky old-fashioned revolver, how to size up a mark.  
  
He was the best.  
  
"Fagin," says John, not amused.  
  
"What, oh, yes," Sherlock says, “halfway through deleting Dickens."  
  
John laughs despite it, sees him there, the bruise-eyed waif scooped off the streets by a soft chiding teenager in a black car, though that doesn't quite make sense.  
  
"How’d you get back home?"  
  
"Train," Sherlock says, and his eyes find the wall, then John's, and lock.  
  
 *****

"John," Sherlock says, almost tenderly, taking his jaw and turning it so his head cocks like a wren’s.  
  
The pistol-whipper did a thorough job, a livid mark and a hint of acceleration-deceleration injury and a fine split beneath the left eye.  
  
John's gun noses his lumbar as Sherlock eases him onto the sofa, tilts a lamp for a better look.  
  
"It's all right,"John says, “just some ice."  
  
But Sherlock's already got his kit out and is snipping and turning and trimming, cleaning the cut with the fine tips of his fingers.  
  
He takes them away.  
  
Turns out the light.

*****

If there’s a bullet lodged close to the spine, nested by T2 like a hummingbird landmine, John can defuse, liberate, excise, save the flight, save the function, hold the nerves soft and steady as tripwires.

The snap and saltation of the nerves.

If under fire you keep going; if in the sights you keep going; you keep going with your eyes on the roofline and the sky and you hear the crack and the click of a choice and it stops you on impact.

It takes you down.

*****

He'd never turn his weapon on himself.  It's not done.  
  
Yes he would.  
  
No he wouldn't.  
  
 _Sherlock, the kickback, the kickback._  
  
 _Let me hold you down. Let me._  
  
 _I can't disarm myself._  
  
 *****

Knifework’s too close.

Two rounds take out a sniper in Antwerp.

Three rounds take out another .

The dateless goes to his toes.  
  
He's never actually killed until now. He's seen so many ragged edges, entries and exits, charred holes, hot barrels, seen the flash under his lids, felt the trigger--stiff, heavy, the recalled bite of the Browning, the coiled strength of John's arm, just there.

What really fires is the will. It had better be true. It had better be right.

*****

He practices re-entry  the way the gun does-- the glow, the flash, the shockwave, the spark.  
  
 *****  
"I don't know,” Sherlock’s mumbling. "I don't know. Maybe Newton’s third law.”  
  
John tells him to hush though clenched teeth.  
  
John digs his fingers into Sherlock's shoulder, a homecoming to the bone, tastes bile, puts him in a lock, breaks the fever with a single shot.  
  
 *****

“Ah,” Mycroft says, looking at his sleeping brother fondly.

“Moriarty,” Mycroft says, “shot himself on a rooftop. Sherlock hasn't yet.”  
  
He's brought John an arsenal of dressings, a Penang curry, a bucket of hot-and-sour, some off-market painkillers, a stash of Earl Grey and a raft of cartridges.  
  
John looks at him with loathing, relents, sits, curls his hand round the box of bullets, makes tea.  
  
“Ah,” Mycroft says, “when Sherlock was ten he ran away.”

*****

He's holding Sherlock still, holding him still with the tensile volatile ease with which he grips his gun, closes wounds, opens eyes.  
  
Sherlock turns in his hands; John takes his wristbones, feels the tendons slipping under his hand, stops, thinks hello my aim, my arms, hello. The only ones I’ll ever need.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Jay Malinowksi, “Life is a Gun”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYy3mUPvt1g)
> 
> [Uncle Tupelo, “Gun”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbei3IAnUEs)
> 
>  [ Kathleen Edwards, “Six o’ Clock News.”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obcYbQmgtno)


End file.
